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Hitha (Yta) is a province ruled by Datha, possibly Etiwaw (Eutaw), a Cusabo subtribe.
The language spoken by the Cusabo is virtually unknown and now extinct.
It did not appear to be related to other known language families on the North American continent.
There is evidence that at least five tribes on the coast, in the territory from the lower Savannah to the Wando River (east of Charleston), spoke a common language which was different from the Guale and Sewee languages of neighboring peoples.
It is likely the Ashepoo, Combahee, Escamaçu, Etiwan, and Kiawah also spoke this language, which has been referred to as Cusaboan.
Only a few words (mostly town names) of this language will be recorded in the sixteenth century by the French explorer René Goulaine de Laudonnière. (One example is Skorrye or Skerry, meaning "bad" or "enemy").
Most words lack translations.
Approximately one hundred place names and twelve personal names in Cusabo have survived.
The place names do not seem to be related to Algonquian, Iroquoian, Muskogean languages or Siouan languages used by other South Carolina coastal and Piedmont tribes. (In places where the Sewee and Santee live, the place names are in the Catawban languages.)
John R. Swanton thought that the bou or boo element, presumably the same bou in the Cusabo word Westo boe meaning "Westoe River", which occurs in many coastal place names, is related to the Choctaw -bok (river).
He speculated that Cusabo was related to the Muskogean family.
Later scholars think this relation of sounds might have been a coincidence without meaning, especially since the older Choctaw form was bayok (small river, river forming part of a delta).
They believe that Cusabo was a different language.
Blair Rudes has suggested that the ⟨-bo⟩ suffix and other evidence may indicate a relationship to the Arawakan languages of the Caribbean indigenous peoples.
If true, it would mean that parts of the Atlantic Coast may have been settled by indigenous peoples from the Caribbean islands.
King Charles charters a new colony to the south of Virginia (and north of Spanish Florida) named Carolina after his father and centered on the recently established settlements of Albemarle sound.
The Charter of Carolina establishes the Province of Carolina on March 24, 1663, and divides it between eight of his loyal friends, known as the Lords Proprietors, as a reward for their faithful political and financial support of his efforts to regain the throne of England.
During the Commonwealth period he had served in the government of Oliver Cromwell and participated in reviewing English laws and drafting the nation’s first formal constitution.
Before that, English constitutional law had been based on ancient constitutional documents such as the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights.
The experience had led Ashley Cooper to see value in adopting a formal constitution for the Province of Carolina.
Because the Fundamental Constitutions are drafted during John Locke’s service to Cooper, who is much more involved in the process than the others, it is widely accepted that Locke had a major role in the making of the Constitutions.
In the view of historian David Armitage and political scientist Vicki Hsueh, the Constitutions were co-authored by Locke and his patron Cooper, known also as 1st Earl of Shaftesbury.
The Constitutions bring right to worship and right to constitute a church to the religious dissenters to Christianity and outsiders such as Jews.
They also promised religious tolerance towards idolater natives and heathens.
The Constitutions also acknowledge aristocracy in North America and constitutionalize the practice of slavery.
The notorious article 110 of the Constitutions states that “Every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever.”
Pursuant to this provision slaveholders are granted absolute power of life and death over their slaves.
Additionally, the Fundamental Constitutions affirm the fact that being a Christian does not alter the civil dominion of a master over his slaves. (Article 107)
Apart from the slavery, the erection of hereditary nobility aside from the proprietors and recognition of noble titles raises controversies.
Because English Law prevents proprietors from granting titles already in use in England, such as Earl or Baron, they create two new titles, cazique and landgrave, that are to be be passed down from father to son.
Those nobles are granted privileges such as being tried only in Chief Justice’s Court and being found guilty by a jury of his peers. (Article 27)
The Constitutions introduce also a hereditary serfdom system, the members of which are called leetmen, in addition to slavery.
Like the slaves, the leetmen and leetwomen are under command and jurisdiction of noblemen to whom they serve. (Article 22)
Through the Constitutions, the Lords Proprietor and the noblemen own the four-fifths of the Colony’s vast lands.
By the same token, the freemen have the right to property for the rest of the land and among them who own more than fifty acres has the right to vote and who has more than five-hundred acres of land has the right to be a member of Parliament. (Article 72)
This requirement of land ownership has been considered as relatively favorable to the freemen in comparison to the laws in England.
Elections are to be held by secret ballot, which is not yet common practice in England.
Laws are to expire automatically after one hundred years, thus preventing outdated regulations from remaining on the books.
The Fundamental Constitutions is designed to formalize a “Gothic” system of balanced government in the new province.
Although described as feudalism by some authorities, the system is arguably more advanced by virtue of its constitution and emphasis on basic rights and reciprocal benefits among classes.
It is nevertheless a pre-Enlightenment system predicated on class hierarchy.
The Fundamental Constitutions provide a framework for urban and regional development consistent with and supportive of the plan for governance and economic development.
Once settlement begins in 1670 a series of “instructions” are transmitted to the colonists with details that flesh out areas that are not addressed by the Fundamental Constitutions.
The design of towns in Carolina is influenced by the intensive planning that had gone on in London after the Great Fire of 1666.
The government of Charles II had solicited plans to rebuild the city, and inspired designs were submitted by the architect Christopher Wren, the scientist Robert Hooke, the cartographer Richard Newcourt, and landscape planner and polymath John Evelyn.
Their designs influence city planning in the areas of public health and safety, land use efficiency, and urban aesthetics.
Seven years pass before Carolina's Lords can arrange for settlement, the first being that of Charles Town (now Charleston) in 1670 on the west bank of the Ashley River, a few miles northwest of the present city and well to the south of the Albemarle settlements.
It is soon chosen by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, one of the Lords Proprietors, to become a "great port towne", a destiny which the city is to fulfill.
The settlement will often be subject to attack from sea and from land: Spanish frigates attack in August, 1670, but the Colonists successfully defend the new city.
He drafts development standards for towns as well as an illustrative plan that he includes in his instructions to the colonists.
His urban plan provides detailed standards for block size, lot size, street width, waterfront setbacks, and other standards similar to modern planning and zoning ordinances.
Locke also writes guiding principles for regional development that sre remarkably similar to principles of modern planning, including aspects of sustainable development and smart growth.
Such aspects include, a) consistency of development practices with the general plan (Fundamental Constitutions); b) concurrent provision of infrastructure with land development; and compactness of development to promote efficient use of land and access to markets.
The Grand Model allocates more land (sixty percent) and representation to “the people” than to the nobility, suggesting that yeoman farmers are envisioned ultimately to become the backbone of the colony.
Nevertheless, a slave-owning elite is also part of the formula from the beginning.
Where Ashley Cooper sees slavery as playing a vital role was in the establishment of the principal estates.
In December, 1671, he advises against bringing too many of “the poorer sort” to the colony until “men of estates” can first “stock the country with Negroes, cattle, and other necessarys.”
There has been discontent among Carolina's settlers, mostly immigrants from Barbados, with the Lords Proprietors during the first decade of the colony.
Charles Town is the principal seat of government for the entire province.
The northern and southern sections of the proprietary colony operate more or less independently, however, due to their remoteness from each other.
The Charles Town settlement has grown by 1680, joined by others from England, Barbados, and Virginia, and relocated to its current peninsular location.
It is the center for further expansion and the southernmost point of English settlement during the late seventeenth century.
Periodic assaults from Spain and France, who still contested England's claims to the region, are combined with resistance from natives, as well as pirate raids.
While the earliest settlers primarily come from England, colonial Charleston is also home to a mixture of ethnic and religious groups.
French, Scottish, Irish, and Germans have migrated to the developing seacoast town, representing numerous Protestant denominations, as well as Roman Catholicism and Judaism.
Settlers have build rice plantations in the South Carolina Lowcountry, east of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line.
Settlers come from all over Europe.
Plantation labor is done by enslaved Africans, who will form the majority of the population by 1720.
Another cash crop is the Indigo plant, a plant source of blue dye, developed by Eliza Lucas.
The transformation of Carolina from a colony with slaves to a slave colony, and later a slave society, begins when slaveowners from Barbados become the dominant force in Carolina politics during the 1680s.
Barbados evolves into a slave colony with a majority slave population during this period.
The Grand Model is informally modified by the Barbadians, who take the titles of nobility, but replace Ashley Cooper’s enlightened aristocracy with a self-serving oligarchy.
The new plantation elite exercises little regard for balanced government, class reciprocity, or humane treatment of the servant and slave classes.
Colonial low-country landowners experiment with cash crops ranging from tea to silk.
Enslaved Africans bring knowledge of rice cultivation, which plantation owners make into a successful business by 1700.
Charleston is the hub of the deerskin trade, which is in fact is the basis of Charleston's early economy.
Trade alliances with the Cherokee and Creek insure a steady supply of deer hides.
An average of fifty-four thousand deer skins have been exported annually between 1699 and 1715 to Europe through Charleston.